These Purge movies do very poorly critically, which makes no sense to me. Yes, the movie drives home its points with the subtlety of a Donald Trump Rally. That doesn’t mean that it’s executed poorly. The First Purge is confusing everyone in thinking its stupid when it’s actually selling social commentary alongside thrilling and well executed scares, something all horror movies try for but only the clever ones succeed at. Maybe you need to stop rolling your eyes everyone, and close them…in fear of the purging James DeMonaco is writing for the screen.
The First Purge takes place on Staten Island, where the Chief of Staff (Patch Darragh) of the New Founding Fathers of America political party excitedly is testing this purge concept created by The Architect (Marisa Tomei). The premise (among the greatest horror premises not just in recent memory, but all time): make all crime legal for 12 hours, let the citizens get it out of their system, and then crime and violence will drop across the island and hopefully, eventually, the whole United States. Many people on the island are very worried about how this experiment will go, including Dmitri (Y’Lan Noel), who’s worried about his business, and Nya (Lex Scott Davis), who believes the government is disguising this night as an excuse to get rid of undesirable parts of the population. Others, like Nya’s brother Isaiah (Joivan Wade) or a crazy parolee named Skeletor (Rotimi Paul), maybe would like to tap into whatever the NFFA is claiming they need to purge out of their system.
Since The Purge: Anarchy, this franchise has been VERY clear about its politics. The Purge series asserts that only the poor, and in particular, minorities, bear the burden of the results of The Purge, while the white people in power bear zero consequences and ultimately, benefit most from The Purge by killing “unwanted” people or gouging them with insurance on their businesses. The First Purge shows all the techniques the government uses to help make sure this experiment is a success, similar to how crack cocaine spread in African American communities in the United States in the 1980s. They bankroll The Architect, give desperate poor people some money to stay on Staten Island, and give them more money if they participate in the purge, they equip the purgers with camera to record minority violence, and when it shockingly turns out people may not be purging as much as the government wants, they sweep in with “cleanup crews” to make it look like there is lots of purging, and completely bury The Architect’s protests. This message is then delivered by media the NFFA controls to say how great the experiment was and how it would be expanded going forward. The First Purge also shows what actually would probably happen normally: yes you’d have a few truly evil or power hungry people using the purge as intended in poor or minority communities, but most people simply resort to breaking open an ATM machine or having sex and doing drugs in public, with no real desire to harm anyone. Other than Frank Grillo, most of the heroes of the purge films have been minorities rising to the occasion to help defend their people from being targeted by people in power, a great message for any community that feels downtrodden.
So how does The First Purge get away with its very obvious allegories? By executing some truly shocking or terrific scares. Some scares are haunting images, like multi-colored contact lenses for purgers or a terrifyingly masked rapist attacking Nya on the street. Others are well executed action sequences. At one point, Dmitri has to enter an apartment complex filled with government assassins to save Nya, and to do so he turns the power off. As a result, the lights flicker on and off and in slow motion, directed beautifully by Gerard McMurray to build tension throw the slow sporadic forward movement of either Dmitri or the assassins and who may or may not be following or followed. Also, because of the politics, the movie never forgets to use horrific jarring scenes of violence that politically are charged but necessary reminders. The 2nd and 3rd Purges had terrifying scenes of the rich auctioning off minorities, and in this one, a white supremacist gang shoots up what should be the safest place in the world for a black or Hispanic person. That scene is surprisingly restrained in the violence it shows, but gives you just enough to know that something truly awful has happened and broken some rule against human behavior that infuriates and saddens you because of how well The First Purge has executed its scares.
The First Purge continues to prove this franchise has something to say, and can be a reliable producer of quality scares inside of as great a horror premise as will exist. I will also never question the creative team’s casting, which is consistently excellent. Case in point, I had a nightmare about Skeletor that night and he was in the movie for maybe 10 minutes. I’m shivering just thinking about the depths of that man’s crazy…